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Rose Heichelbech

For more than a decade and through the Stock Market Crash of 1929, America was also facing Prohibition. The lack of alcohol was not only hard to deal with in the tough first years of the Great Depression, but it also gave rise to a whole culture of gangster violence and bootlegging the likes of which the U.S. had never before seen.

Many working people were desperate for a drink and didn’t mind a bit that the supply was coming from organized crime. So when Franklin D. Roosevelt was campaigning for the 1932 presidential election he specifically called for repeal of Prohibition in order to put an end to mobster power. The repeal was one of the first things he did as President of the United States. When bootlegging was finally curbed because alcohol was legal again, gangsters like Al Capone, who had made their fortunes from illegal liquor, where caught and tried. Have a look at the news of day in the footage below.